Phnom Penh & the Killing Fields

Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia, home of a very impressive Royal Palace and National Museum. However, it's best known tourist destinations are memorials and museums dedicated to the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime. Most famous is The Killing Fields, where political prisoners were executed by the thousands in a small field about 10 km outside the city of Phnom Penh. These grounds alone turned up numerous mass graves where the remains of nearly 10,000 people were found. There's a large stupa in the middle of the site where the remains of skeletons and skulls are housed. The stupa structure allows the souls of the departed to reach heaven, according to local tradition. Another 'must see" is S-21, the prison where political prisoners were held, interrogated and tortured before execution inside Phnom Penh proper. S-21 actually has a more comprehensive museum detailing the backstory that led up to the political and cultural environment that brought Khmer Rouge regime, the profile and history of the Khmer Rouge leaders and the aftermath of how Cambodia tried to rebuild in the aftermath after the Khmer Rouge had been ousted (with no help from the US or the UN, who refused to recognize the new Cambodian Government and insisted that the Khmer Rouge retain their seats on the UN panel as the legitimate governing body in Cambodia until 1990, because the new government was deemed to be too cozy with Vietnam). Simultaneously, I was also reading the autobiography "First They Killed My Father" by Loung Ung .. a Cambodian refugee who lived through the Khmer Rouge regime as a child. The Killing Fields and mass executions get a lot of news, but the real loss of life happened silently. The Khmer Rouge idolized the peasant farmers in the rural areas as the ideal Cambodian citizens. They killed off all intellectuals, anyone who received received higher education, or had spent time abroad as "unpure". In hindsight (or foresight), killing off all their doctors probably wasn't a great idea. Also, the KR wanted to do away with all forms of capitalism and money exchange and install a pure agrarian economy. The citizens that weren't executed were ordered to work slave labor on agricultura farms, mostly to produce rice, which the KR would then use to export for other good (typically guns and arms). Unsurprisingly, the simplistic economic model didn't work and most Cambodians died of starvation, infectious disease and exhaustion rather than at the hands of executioners. The sad irony is that Pol Pot and the other high ranking Khmer Rouge officials were the exact opposite of the "pure Khmer" model they were trying to enforce. Pol Pot, the son of a wealthy land owner, met most of his high ranking KR officers at university in Paris where they were studying abroad ... the epitomy of the "intellectually elite" they had executed.

Phnom Penh also has some very nice tourist attractions, like the remodeled and refurbished National Museum and Royal Palace. It seems the government is trying to restore a sense of national honor and pride among their emotionally battered people. Economically, they still have a ways to go, but as a whole the entire mindset and resiliency of the Cambodian people is nothing short of impressive. They are gregarious, love to laugh, kind, enjoy simple pleasures and simply inspirational.

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